عَلِمَت نَفسٌ ما أَحضَرَت
Then a soul shall know what it has readied [for itself].
EXPOSITION
This verse is the response or the consequential predicate of the conditional clauses that have preceded it. It is reported of both Ibn Abbas and ʿUmar that whenever they would recite this surah and arrive at this verse, they would exclaim: ‘For this [warning] was the [preceding] narrative effectuated.’
The same warning is repeated several times in various surahs with variations in choice of words and style. In 82:4-5, which is an almost identical replica of this verse, it says: When the graves are overturned, then a soul shall know what it has sent ahead and left behind; in 10:30: There every soul will examine what it has sent in advance; in 3:30: The day when every soul will find present whatever good it has done; and as to whatever evil it has done; in 17:13-14: We have attached every person’s omen to his neck, and We shall bring it out for him on the Day of Resurrection as a wide open book that he will encounter. ‘Read your book! Today your soul suffices as your own reckoner’; in 50:22: You were certainly oblivious of this. We have removed your veil from you, and so your sight is acute today; in 79:34-35: When the great, overwhelming event arrives, on the day that man remembers what he has done; in 99:7-8: So whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.
Even though the word for soul used in this verse is in the singular, it is meant in its generic sense as in the Arabic saying: tamratun khayrun min jarrādatin (a date is better than a palm stalk), where the words date and palm stalk are used in the singular but the expression has a universal and generic sense, meaning: dates are better than stalks. Thus, Tabatabai writes that the word soul (nafs) used here, though in the singular, refers to a species of a thing or a variety of a thing.
[1] Al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 20/236.
[2] See 18:49.
[3] Daqaiq, 14/15; Zubdah, 7/347.
[4] Mizan, 20/215.